On “The Five“, host Dana Perino – a former spokeswoman for the Justice Department and White House during the Bush administration – recalled how Democrats so fervently opposed the nomination of then-California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a Black woman who grew up in heavily-segregated Alabama, to the high-profile D.C. circuit court of appeals.
In his speech opposing Rogers Brown, Biden gave a verbal nod to then-Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V. – a prolific filibusterer — and said that the vote on the jurist’s nomination would be “the single-most significant vote any one of us will cast in my 32 years in the Senate.”
“I suspect [Byrd] would agree with that,” Biden said. Obama later labeled Rogers Brown a “political activist.”
After two years of having her nomination blocked by Senate Democrats, Bush succeeded in getting Rogers Brown seated on the appeals bench in 2005, where she served until 2017.